Monday round-up

Posted Mon, October 21st, 2013 8:20 am by Amy Howe

The controversy over recent remarks by Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit, who indicates in his new book that he now believes that his 2007 opinion upholding an Indiana voter ID law (which was subsequently affirmed by the Court) was wrong, continues. (I covered some of the earlier coverage in Friday’s round-up.) At Jost on Justice, Ken Jost contends that “Posner’s confession of error . . . would have earned him a gold star for candor but for his subsequent decision to deflect the blame to the lawyers in the case.” He concludes that “[t]he real blame, however, lies not with the lawyers and not even with Posner alone, but with the deferential stance that the Supreme Court itself has taken in reviewing laws that make it hard to vote.”

Last week’s oral argument in Daimler AG v. Bauman, in which the Court is considering whether the car company can be sued in U.S. courts for human rights violations that occurred in Argentina in the 1970s, continues to garner coverage. Adam Steinman discusses the oral argument at Opinio Juris, where he predicts that “it appears unlikely that the Court will endorse the Ninth Circuit’s conclusion that general personal jurisdiction existed over Daimler,” but adds that “it is possible that the Court’s opinion will be a narrow one.” At ACSblog, Marco Simons cautions the Justices that “their role here is to state what the Constitution requires, not what they think the best rule would be.” He observes that, “[i]ronically enough, they actually do have the power to set the best rule, but this case is not the vehicle for it. If they think that California’s statute reaches too far, the Supreme Court has the authority to change the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and to limit the permissible bases for the exercise of jurisdiction in federal court.”

Briefly:

Although this month’s debt ceiling crisis was ultimately averted, Michael Kirkland of UPI discusses the Court’s 1935 decision in Perry v. United States and what it might ultimately mean for the president’s power to raise the debt limit on his own in a future crisis.

Garrett Epps of The Atlantic reports on last week’s oral argument in Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, the challenge to Michigan’s ban on the use of affirmative action at public universities. He describes the Court as “harder to read than usual, but the question in my mind at the end of the argument was not which way the justices would rule but how many of them would vote to reinstate Proposal 2. Justice Sotomayor, who has said she regards affirmative action as key to her career, seemed to be favoring the challengers; the other moderate-liberals held their fire.”

[Disclosure: Kevin Russell of the law firm Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is among the counsel to the respondents in Daimler and was among the counsel on an amicus brief in support of the respondents. However, I am not affiliated with the firm.]

Aug. 2015

In a conversation with Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard, Justice Samuel Alito reflects upon (among other things) his arrival on the Court, recent First Amendment cases, the themes in his dissent in Obergefell v. Hodges, and his love for baseball.